تأثیر یوگا و پیلاتس بر عملکرد حرکتی سالمندان

Objectives:&nbsp;Old age is a period accompanied by automatic, gradual, and advancing corrosive changes in&nbsp;most organs and physiological systems of the body. One such important change is in the systems involved&nbsp;in balance control, which could expose older people to serious damages, such as bone fractures that are&nbsp;associated with high medical costs, due to poor balance. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was&nbsp;to investigate the effect of yoga and Pilates exercises on motor performance of the elderly people. Methods & Materials: This study was conducted using a quasi-experimental design. A total of 60 obese&nbsp;subjects (mean[SD] age: 62.2[1.6] years) were randomly assigned into 3 groups of yoga (n=20), Pilates&nbsp;(n=20), and control (n=20). Yoga practices, which comprised Asana training, Pranaya training, and meditation,&nbsp;were done 3 times a week, for 8 weeks. The Pilates course had 3 sections of warming up, major&nbsp;practices, and cooling down. These practices were done in positions of lying down, sitting, and standing.&nbsp;The movements started from simple activities and gradually got more complicated. Motor performance&nbsp;tests of static and dynamic balance, flexibility, and lower extremity strength were administered. The&nbsp;Stork test was used to evaluate standing balance in terms of seconds and milliseconds. In this test, the&nbsp;old person stands on the dominant foot and put the other foot on the medial part of bearing knee in&nbsp;such a way that the toes point downward and the hands rest on the iliac crests. Then, with the sign of&nbsp;the examiner, the subject lifts his or her dominant heel and try to keep the balance as much as possible.&nbsp;The flexibility was evaluated with Welz test. The subject sits on the ground with legs straight and attaches&nbsp;his or her feet to the flexometer box, then leans forward without bending knees, move the box levers&nbsp;to the front and leans forward as much as possible. The test of climbing stairs up and down was used to&nbsp;measure dynamic stability. In this test, the subjects climb up and down 7 times from a 20-cm height or&nbsp;chair. The subject climbs with one leg and then lifts another leg. Next, he or she brings down the first leg&nbsp;and then another leg. Each climbing is considered one time. When the subject did this activity 7 times,&nbsp;the time is recorded. The standing chair test is used to evaluate the muscle strength of lower extremity&nbsp;and legs. While sitting on the edge of the chair, the subject should stand with the best of his or her&nbsp;power in 30 seconds and then returns to sitting position. The mean of number of activities during two&nbsp;30-second cycle is regarded as the final record. To analyze the data, we used 1-way ANOVA test and post&nbsp;hoc Tukey test. Results: The results indicated that both Pilates and yoga exercises significantly improved the scores of&nbsp;static balance, dynamic balance, power of lower extremity muscles, and flexibility (P<0.05) while no&nbsp;significant difference was found between 2 experimental groups with regard to improvement in movement&nbsp;performance. Conclusion: According to our research findings, yoga and Pilate&rsquo;s exercises can improve static and dynamic&nbsp;balance and lower extremities strength. Since the improvement in the variables of movement performance&nbsp;has a significant effect on preventing falling of older people, we recommend that these exercises&nbsp;should be followed by the older people.